Athens — Mother's Day was just weeks away the day Teresa Helms gave birth to her son last year.

David was a big boy — 8 pounds, 8 ounces, 21 inches long, healthy, cute as a button.

Family photo (ENLARGE)

Teresa Helm with her newborn David, born March 28th, 2007.

Family photo (ENLARGE)

Josh Abel (left) and Teresa Helms hold their newborn, David, in 2007.

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But to David, she will always be Teresa. Not Mother. Not Mom.

And so this Mother's Day for Helms will not be much different from the last. She will honor her own mother, but she's not looking for any special attention herself.

"Caroline is his mother," she said recently, meaning Caroline Camick, David's adoptive mother.

Helms, now a 23-year-old University of Georgia senior, knew she was pregnant the moment she noticed subtle changes in her body and started to experience morning sickness.

When a home pregnancy test confirmed her suspicions, she was devastated. She worried about what people would say, how they'd judge her.

Helms quickly learned, though, that she and the baby's father, Josh Abel, weren't the first couple faced with an unplanned pregnancy and that other couples had struggled with what to do next, just as they were doing.

Some had chosen adoption. Others chose abortion; but that option never fitted in with any scenario Helms could imagine.

"It never even entered my mind," she said.

Her parents suggested raising the baby. An older sister offered to move to Athens to help her. A friend talked to her about adoptions.

"I knew about closed adoption and had heard lots of horror stories about people trying to find their real parents," Helms said. "I didn't want that for my baby."

At Catholic Charities, Helms discovered there was another way to give her baby a stable family and still remain a part of his life: open adoption.

A caseworker at the nonprofit agency, Helms said, helped her keep her goal — creating the best possible home for her child.

Helms asked herself a million times, was adoption the right thing? What did she want in a mother and father for her boy? Would they share her values? Did they enjoy arts and crafts and sports as she and Josh did?

Near the end of her pregnancy, the caseworker began showing Helms and Abel potential adoptive parents.

Their search ended the day they met Paul and Caroline Camick, who seemed liked doubles of the young couple.

Caroline was an artist who taught gymnastics. She talked a lot like Josh but she also was artistic like Teresa. Paul was a little league football coach, Bible teacher and UGA grad student. He was reserved like Teresa but loved sports like Josh.

"We knew they were just like us except they couldn't have kids," Helms said.

They also knew the Atlanta couple were the right parents for David, and together the four of them began drawing up a negotiated agreement. The Camicks were willing to accept "modest" gifts for David from Josh's and Teresa's families; any contact or visits of extended family would need to be made through Josh and Teresa; Paul and Caroline were committed to having their child know any future half or full siblings; and all persons agreed that this was a relationship that would develop over time and, as time passed, appropriate boundaries would be put into place.

David Paul Camick, whose name was chosen by the four parents, was born March 28. The couples signed the agreement two days later.

"It was hard, but I would never go back," Helms said the other day. "He was a gift to all of us.

"I have lost nothing but gained everything, and I still have this amazing new person in my life who I can see, show off and love."

Come Saturday, Helms said, David and the Camicks will come to Athens to celebrate. But it won't be because of Mother's Day. It will be Graduation Day.

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